What if an option was built into mIRC which checks if a new version is available yet. This could notify the user of this when he or she opens mIRC (ofcourse there should be the posibility to disable this for people who don't like version checkers).
If this were built into previous versions, all users would emediatly know about the release of v6.12, and so everyone would have full security.
Right now there are still a lot of people unaware, not everyone has signed up on the newslist and with alternative ways news of new versions takes time to reach every casual user, this could take several weeks..
ahwell it's just an idea, just another suggestion would be not to make it as anoying as in msn
